The Fate of the Furious  ★★★

PREDICTABLE, ridiculous, over-the-top, full of computer graphics, brainless.

Yep, The Fate of the Furious may be all of those things…but I still had fun with it.

Criticising the film for being any of those things is actually pointless – it’s either your type of movie or not.

The eighth in the extremely popular action franchise, this one features one unbelievable car chase after another, moving from Cuba to Germany then New York and finally a Russian icefield with tanks and a nuclear submarine thrown in for good measure.

Other highlights include a prison face-off between The Rock and Jason Statham resulting in a huge riot and, best of all, a tribute to John Woo’s Hardboiled in a mid-air fight sequence involving Statham.

‘The Stath’ is nearly always good value (the last Mechanic film aside) and along with The Rock they are the stars of this instalment. Another fun sequence occurs early in the film involving The Rock motivating one of his teams.

In contrast, Diesel’s character is a little subdued in this one, mainly due to the fact the story has him playing against his usual character once again. Another disappointment is Charlize Theron’s villain who looks great but that’s about where it ends.

For those who say these films are full of CGI, that may be true but there were only a couple of occasions that completely took me out of the film. Otherwise the blending and composition of the CGI with live action is pretty astounding.

The number of stunt persons is another good indication of the live action work that has gone into a film and I lost count at more than 120.

As for the story, don’t worry about that. Big, dumb and, once again, a lot of fun.